Customer Reviews

The Art of Mark Ryden: Anima Mundi

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This is a great introduction to a visually arresting artist. If you like Juxtapoz type stuff, you'll love this book. But don't pay the crazy prices sellers are asking on ebay for this baby (I mean, they did print 10,000 of 'em - so how rare can it be?!?) but instead wait for the second printing which is suppose to be in the works.

on a purely sensual level, it's hard not to be won over by mark ryden. he knows his way around the oil paints, and he's got style; he saturates his scenes in a soft hazy jurassic atmosphere suggestive of the nascent dreamlands of little golden books. strange juxtapositions of quaint and curious objects compell one's attention. but that's basically all there is to it: just a superficial hotch-pot of bunnies and bees and meat. when you read his (dare i say) rather pompous explanations of his pictures, in which he tries to apply deep metaphysical meaning to the bunnies and bees and meat, it's almost embarrassing. he'd be better off just saying "here it is, it's deliberately weird, enjoy its deliberate weirdness," rather than carefully explaining how his bunnies are cute and fuzzy allegories for transcendant qabalistic mysteries.

the other thing is the fact that this is yet another art book deliberately released in a limited edition, so that anybody interested in his work has to go pay seven times its value on internet auctions to land a copy. i find that really irritating. i mean, there was a "deluxe" edition - why couldn't that have been the ridiculously limited and overpriced version, and then have the scaled-down version released in an edition large enough to meet the obvious demand? why no reprints? does mark not want my money? ok, i'm done now.

This is the book so many Ryden fans have been wishing for! Perhaps it my affection for big-headed children or otherworldy pink skies that makes Ryden's work so wonderful to behold. His art transports me back to my childhood that was filled with smiling rubber animals, Barbies and the Colonel's chicken. I can't walk through the meat department of Safeway without thinking of Mark Ryden and grinning to myself. Even his monsters, mutants and oversized insects are as benign and charming as his portraits of Lincoln. It is a magical yet vaguely disturbing world Mark Ryden brings to life, full of bees, bunnies, his son Jasper and a dog named Jesus.

Mark Ryden's work has appeared on the covers of Communication Arts, Juxtapoz art magazine and Rolling Stone. His art is currently on display at the Earl McGrath Gallery in NYC. ...

Anima Mundi offers a nice sampling of Mark Ryden's work up to (but not including) his Bunnies and Bees exhibition artwork which is his best work so far. Some of his nice tiki themed images aren't here, and there's a number of commercial illustrations that I didn't care for. But overall a nice selection. It's his only retrospective book collection so it's your only choice right now. Although a quick seller, the book is being revised and improved for its second printing so don't spend too much cash on a 1st printing is you have to have one now, the 2nd printing will be the better buy when it comes out. Honestly, the cover price on this was $[money] and amazon's price was $[money]. So to pay $[money] plus some people are asking for is crazy!

Mark Ryden is one of the most magnificent painters I have ever had the pleasure to experience. This book is a collection of his best work, and I will treasure it for a long time. If you want to be taken to a place full of wonder, inspiration, and originality, this book is great. Too bad it is now out of print.

A glorious compilation of Mark Ryden's work. Includes beautiful one to a page prints of his best paintings, drawings and photos of the things that inspire him. A virtual feast for your eyes!

Mark Ryden is definitely a master artist for our age. His paintings are intricate and surreal, seeming to pull the dreamworld into the real world and representing it in such a way that is both charming and inexplicably bizarre. It is like stepping from the innocence of your childhood and finding yourself in an imaginary land where cute bunnies butcher meat and angelic children with luminous eyes hold the hand of a miniature Abe Lincoln and seem to say "this is normal".

Beautifully produced full color book covering Mark Ryden's illustration and painting career. Cover title design printed in gold foil. Published in 2001, this book was limited to an edition of just 10,000 copies and is already out-of-print and a collector's item on the secondary market. Word has it that book distributors had sold out of this in just 1 month. This item is not to be missed by Mark Ryden fans and collectors.

Even scarcer than Anima Mundi was the release of the book BUNNIES AND BEES published in December of 2001 to coincide with the exhibit of the same name. This was published in a beautiful large format, 9 x 12, 50 pages, and contains Mark Ryden's work done after Anima Mundi making it an essential Ryden item. This was limited to just 8,000 copies. The paintings in this book are perhaps the best yet from Mark Ryden.

For the Ryden art collector, there's also the limited edition boxed set of the Anima Mundi book. Limited to just 500 sets, this contains the Anima Mundi book signed and numbered by Mark Ryden on a special limitation page not found in the normal edition; a signed and numbered giclee print titled "Sick Girl" which is reproduced in the book; an Anima Mundi bookmark, all packaged in a beautiful fabric box.

I have owned Mark Ryden's Anima Mundi for quite some time now and never tire of looking through it and admiring the masterpieces inside. In fact, it seems like I discover new and amazing details each time I look through it! Mark Ryden is truly an awe inspiring artist and Anima Mundi contains some of his better known works. If you get the chance to view a copy of this book, take it! I can almost guarantee that you'll enjoy it.

Although long out-of-print, this is the essential Mark Ryden book for collectors. It contains all of the now classic images including many images from when he was working as a commercial illustrator. These are in a nice large format and I've seen people even take pages out of the book to try and sell as prints. His other book Fushigi Circus has a good selection but the format is too small for my liking, so Anima Mundi is well worth the collector's price.

The work of Mark Ryden has been described as kitschy pseudo sentimental works that harken back to some twisted Golden Book era gone bad. Sure one could view his work in that way. To me that's a bit simplistic. I tend to get a bit more awestruck looking at his images. To me they invoke a ageless romanticism that juxtaposes humanity with the cosmos. One of the things in art that has always appealed to me was when mans very awkward nature as a sentient creature is shown. And in the case of Ryden's work, this awkward nature is contrasted with the vastness of time and space. The pictures are intimate but they allude to so much. The details such as meat and candy show the animal nature of man and the sugarcoated side that hides and pretends to not be afraid. This awkward nature that humans have is rarely spoken or written about. Still, it's obvious that Ryden is pushing this. His works, while uncomfortable at first glance, show characters engaged in life cycles. Often times plants and creatures from the Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian periods on this planet are painted to co-exist with human/cartoon counterparts. These characters, to me, represent humanity. Some times there is more specific symbolism going on with Santa, and certain celebrities. Still, to me, the best works are the ones that allude to the vast bridge of time that humanity has crossed to arrive here at this moment in time. Our self reflective nature give us the power to look back on the history of the earth, the galaxy, and the universe. In the face of this vast time that has elapsed, man is very insignificant. That idea can be unsettling, uncomfortable, even awkward. This is the feeling I get when looking at Mark Ryden's work. I feel insignificant, yet I still feel awe and wonder at the very wonderful awkward nature of myself existing in the universe. Mark Ryden has made images that allude to this vastness. He has also used the art of Rudolph Zallinger from the Time Life book The World We Live In. The book is amazing and has been on my shelf since the day my father gave it to me. I'm sure Ryden has his own copy as well.